Current approaches to the study of memory for text have tended to stress either the encoding of a body of new information or the retrieval of facts stored as part of one's generalized world knowledge. These two lines of research have remained relatively independent. The present proposal is designed to examine both how one's existing knowledge affects the encoding of new information and how new information alters existing knowledge. We will attempt to isolate the factors which lead people to compartmentalize incoming information rather than integrating it with their generalized world knowledge. This will be accomplished by having subjects learn new information and then measuring their ability to relate that information to their existing knowledge and to use that information in a novel situation.